Cheney Says Failing to Attack Iraq Would Have Been 'Irresponsible'
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By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 25, 2003; Page A01
Vice President Cheney launched a White House counterattack yesterday against rising criticism of the administration's handling of Iraq, arguing that failing to confront Saddam Hussein would have been "irresponsible in the extreme" and could have endangered the United States.
Cheney was a main architect of the administration's case for war, which Democrats are challenging as exaggerated. He asserted that "the safety of the American people was at stake" because of Iraqi efforts to build weapons of mass destruction and "cultivate" ties with terrorist groups.
"At a safe remove from the danger, some are now trying to cast doubt upon the decision to liberate Iraq," Cheney said. "The ability to criticize is one of the great strengths of our democracy. But those who do so have an obligation to answer this question: How could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?"
Cheney, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute two hours before a congressional panel reported on intelligence lapses before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, devoted much of his address to a grave assessment of the continuing threat posed by terrorism. Cheney compared the war on terrorism to the struggles against fascism and communism in the past century.
"The terrorists intend to strike America again," he said. "One by one, in every corner of the world, we will hunt the terrorists down and destroy them. In Iraq, we took another essential step in the war on terror."
Administration officials described Cheney's remarks as an effort to regain the offensive after more than two weeks of shifting White House accounts of how an allegation about Iraq seeking nuclear materials in Africa landed in President Bush's State of the Union address in January even though U.S. intelligence agencies had expressed doubts about the claim for months.
One official said the speech, delivered in front of a row of U.S. flags against a severe black backdrop, was aimed at "steadying the ship."
Bush's aides said the speech was also intended as a warning to congressional Democrats, many of whom had access to the same intelligence, that the White House plans to fight back against criticism of its Iraq policy. Aides said Bush plans to follow up on the Cheney speech next month with a major address on the war on terrorism.
The Cheney speech was part of an administration-coordinated response to Democratic criticism. The effort includes the GOP leadership on Capitol Hill, the national Republican Party and television appearances by well-known Bush supporters. Ed Gillespie, incoming chairman of the Republican National Committee, suggested in a memo to party leaders that they frame the choice as "confronting terrorists in Baghdad or Boston, in Kabul or Kansas City."
The White House's strategy banks on the willingness of Americans to turn their attention to the benefits of unseating Hussein and away from the intelligence cited by Bush to justify the war. One presidential adviser said it is clear that the White House is losing the public relations war over the specifics of the case against Iraq and so is trying to refocus attention on the broader goals of the war on terrorism.
The vice president's office was a major force in putting Iraq at the top of the administration's agenda. Cheney, during an Aug. 26 address in Nashville, made a forceful case that Iraq was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons that would threaten the United States.
In yesterday's speech, Cheney laid out a detailed rationale for the war Bush launched on March 20, quoting at length from declassified sections of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq issued in October. White House officials have cited the NIE as the basis for pre-war speeches about Iraq. Cheney said three times that it would have been "irresponsible in the extreme" to disregard the warnings.
As part of an effort to rebut criticism that it had exaggerated the threat, the White House last Friday released eight pages of excerpts from the intelligence report.
Cheney quoted some of the declassified passages, saying that Iraq was "continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs," and that Iraq "could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material."
Although Cheney quoted the report as saying that Iraq, if left unchecked, "probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade," he did not read the next sentence, which referred to a dissent from State Department intelligence experts. They agreed in part but called the available evidence "inadequate."
Cheney cited a passage that said all key aspects of Iraq's offensive biological weapons program "are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War." He omitted a qualifier at the start of the passage in which intelligence analysts said they "judge" that to be the case.
The speech marked a return to the administration's emphasis on Hussein as a serious threat to the United States. In recent weeks, with U.S. forces controlling Iraq but failing to locate chemical or biological weapons or clear evidence of a nuclear program, officials had begun pointing to the freedom of the Iraqi people as a worthy end of its own.
Cheney did not mention the continuing U.S. casualties or the failure to discover weapons of mass destruction but said Americans "still have many tasks to complete in Iraq, and many dangers remain." He touched on the human rights crimes of Hussein's government. "If we had not acted," Cheney said, "the torture chambers would still be in operation, the prison cells for children would still be filled, the mass graves would still be undiscovered."
Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
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